October 1, 2010

Here's a paper by Thomas J. Espenshade et al based on 125,000 applications for freshman admission at three highly selective private research universities in the 1980s and a couple of classes in the 1990s. The usual suspects really help your chances at getting in: being smart, being black, being Hispanic (to a lesser extent than black), being a legacy, and being an athlete.

Being an athlete grew in value over this time period, perhaps due to the growth in female sports. The authors didn't look into this specifically. (In general, college athletics for women has been a very nice boon to the upper middle class, since a huge proportion of female athletes come from intact two parent families where Dad pushes his daughter into sports: e.g., women's golf teams are not made up of the daughters of single moms.)

Or maybe colleges just found that athletes are bigger donors later in life? Maybe it's the bonding experience of competing for your college? If so, colleges should look into more non-athletic competitions for nerdier students to strengthen their emotional ties to their college. For example, I represented Rice at various College Bowl tournaments around the country.

Being a legacy is a nice boost, but the problem with being a legacy is that it's not portable across all universities like being a black or a jock. If you are like Obama's kids and are legacies at four different Ivy League schools, well, that's nice, but if you are a legacy at only one college and you don't particularly want to go there or you don't get in there, well, that's not as nice.

Also, the study doesn't answer the big question everybody has about legacies -- is it good enough just to be a legacy even if your cheapskate parent hasn't donated anything since you were born or does your parent have to have donated substantial amounts to the college to be a Real Legacy? If the latter, how much?

Also, being Asian hurts your chances, even when being an athlete and a legacy are controlled for. It would be worth knowing more about this. Do colleges figure Asians won't donate as much as alumni? Do colleges figure Asian test scores are inflated by test prep? Do colleges figure Asians make the campus experience less fun or less interesting and thus the college less attractive? And, are any of these presuppositions true? It would seem like an important and interesting topic to find out more about.

86 comments:

helene edwards
said...

Here's a question: Let's say you're white and finish in the top 0.5% on the SAT. Instead of going to college, would it be better to immediately start work as a test prep tutor? I mean, after 4 yrs. of making $150/hr. or so, you'd have a pile to start a bigger business or franchise or whatever, right? Or, you could still apply to Med school without a BA, right?

Great post Steve. While I disagree with your insinuation that Asian American scores are inflated by test prep, you highlight the fact that athletics and legacy admissions are basically forms of affirmative action.

I think most people don't realize that white Americans benefit disproportionately from legacy admissions relative to people of all races, and that whites and blacks benefit disproportionately from athletics admissions, relative to Hispanics and Asians. I think you highlighting the Obama children as examples of legacy admissions is a bit misleading, because legacy admits are still disproportionately white.

By the way, the assertion that test prep significantly boosts SAT scores is an argument made by liberals who deny the reality of HBD and argue that the only reason whites score higher than blacks and Hispanics is because whites are wealthier and therefore can afford test prep, which significantly boosts their SAT scores. As I've argued, the SAT is highly g-loaded, as opposed to being heavily content based, like say the AP exams are. What people like Rushton and Jensen have argued is that the more g-loaded a test is, the larger the East Asian-white gap. I think this may explain why East Asian Americans appear to do even better on tests like the SAT/PSAT than what their IQ would suggest.

...women's golf teams are not made up of the daughters of single moms.

A guy I worked with about 10 years ago was pushing one of his daughters into golf. At least at that time, because of Title IX, there were a ton of girls' golf scholarships that went unfilled. Apparently, you didn't even have to be that good - just a competent duffer.

He had no illusions about her ever making a living at it - he figured four years of tuition was good enough motivation.

Steve, maybe you should just drop this "Asian scores are inflated by tset prep" meme. As some of your readers have pointed out, you have to decide whether this is an objective HBD blog or a pro-white blog. Your repeated insinuations and your persistently coy denials are quite frankly getting to be tiring. You risk alienating your smarter readers, who are more interested in HBD as a whole, rather than being interested in pro-white issues.

There have been a number of books written by retired directors of admission. Athletes do donate much more money than non athletes, and fraternity men donate much more than men who are not "fraternity type" If there are three candidates, one is likely to join a frat and be active in it, one is likely to participate in sports in some way, and one is likely to skip the frat and skip the sports, then it is logical for the university to admit the first two and not admit the last one, providing all else is equal.

Another thing that highly correlates to donations, how charitable the family is. That is if the admissions department sees that the parents of the applicant are active in donating to their own college, and also in donating to good causes then the applicant is likely to grow up to be a person that donates to colleges.

Steve, colleges are global brand names. The Trustees are responsible for enhancing the value of that brand name. Trustees think all the time about ways to add to the very long term value and prestige of the college. They are very much forward thinking. The trustees are in an arms race and desperately need to admit students that will donate a great deal of money later in life. The trustees have no choice.

Nearly every admission policy is a result of either the need to enhance the prestige of the college or the need to bring in more money.

Steve, I worked in alumni relations at a top tier university, that is, phoning alumni for money. We raised in a year what the president raises over lunch.

The athletes are more likely to give, but they give to their team. So the whole 'athletes give money' is a wash. And Asians didn't seem to give much. The big name gifts are from old WASP families and Jews who struck it rich.

As for Asians: If the Asians became too numerous, white people would apply in fewer numbers (and maybe the Asians themselves). If Asians became rarer... Asians would continue applying.

Complaints about how the UCs are too Asian are ubiquitous, and come from the most PC of people.

I think it's the whole 'diversity' thing with Asians, plus if the school becomes too Asian it loses prestige--sort of like the way they kept Jews out in the twenties.

As for athletes, their extroverted personalities suit them well for business, which brings in the most donor money. This was discussed in one of these college admissions books, which I think you discussed yourself. ;) American business, anyway--things may be different in Japan, but these schools are American.

You can't apply to med school or a good law school without a BA. It's kind of silly.

"you highlight the fact that athletics and legacy admissions are basically forms of affirmative action."

A, no. Its not affirmative action because the institutions in question were built by whites. The institutions' degrees have value because of previous generations of students. Legacies are about help 'our posterity', not that of Taipei.

"The big name gifts are from old WASP families and Jews who struck it rich."

truer words were never ever posted to this blog.

Isteve is filled with people complaining how the working class white boys whose families have lived in this country for 200 years can't get in to the ivies. Complained that the ivies seem to show preference for the old Wasp aristocracy and the Ashkenazi.

Well, the donation record of working class white boys admitted to the ivies is terrible. Going by the track record, it is dumb for the ivies to let some working class boy from West Virginia or Idaho in, since that working class boy will grow up to donate very little.

When I was at U. C. Berkeley, a classmate of mine got his hands on the actual admission criteria the school used at the time.

There were 4 groups. Group 1 was admitted based purely on "Academic Index", which was constructed by multiplying GPA by 1000, and adding the SAT and ETS Achievement Test scores, for a maximum total of 8000 points. About 32% of admissions were from Group 1, and the cutoff was somewhere north of 7000 points. (You also had to have met the minimum published UC admission requirements, which meant your high school had to offer all the specific classes required.) Group 2 was where all that extra stuff on the application counted. Your essay, your extracurricular activities, all were assigned points. I think the maximum number of bonus points was around 1000 to 1200. The cutoff level here was similar to that for Group 1. About 32% of the class was admitted in Group 2.

Group 3 was the affirmative action group. To get in under group 3, you had to meet the minimum UC eligibility criteria, both for classes, and for combination of grades and test scores. This meant, in practical terms, an academic index of somewhere near 6000. You also had to be: an under-represented minority (black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, American Indian), or an athletic scholarship winner, or physically handicapped, or a ROTC scholarship winner, or a Navy veteran. About 30% of the class was Group 3. Group 4 was the special cases - each applicant had to be specially approved. For Group 4, the standard U.C. admission criteria were waived. No more than half (or a third?) of Group 4 could be scholarship athletes. Some of the other Group 4 kids were ones who went to a school which didn't offer enough classes to meet all the UC eligibility requirements, or those who had significant artistic talent but subpar grades, and probably kids of big contributors or important politicians who didn't quite have the grades or test scores.

Groups 1 and 2 were almost all Asian and white, with whites predominating in group 2.

At about this time, U.C. Berkeley was sued by some Asian students because they were imposing a minimum Verbal SAT cutoff that they weren't imposing on whites or NAMs, and that there were Asian students with crappy SAT Verbal scores who still would have made it in purely on academic index. U.C. settled without admitting guilt and agreed to not do that anymore.

I think most people don't realize that white Americans benefit disproportionately from legacy admissions relative to people of all races

Probably because it is not really true, as a recent thread here demonstrated. The biggest beneficiaries of legacy admissions relative to people of all races are probably Jews. Since they are typically included in the "white" figures, it skews things.

Apparently that test prep never taught you about how not to generalize from one specific case. Most studies show that on an aggregate level, test prep minimally boosts scores on g-loaded tests like the SAT. Your claim, even if true, would be an outlier and an exception to the general rule.

You seem to be confused about why legacy admissions exists. It exists in order to build up the endowment, not to help out whites because they built the institutions.

Unlike you, most people, including most white Americans, aren't obsessed about race.

I have no doubt that Jews benefit more relative to non-Jewish whites from legacy admissions. But the fact of the matter remains, non-Jewish whites also benefit disproportionately relative to blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, when it comes to legacy admissions.

Large numbers of Asians at American colleges is a relatively new phenomenon. There's not that many 50 year old Asian alum relative to the number of 30 year old alums. So it's probably too soon to say whether the Asians will become big donors in their peak giving years. My bet, as someone who's seen a few Asian weddings, is that they will hold their own against the other ethnics. There's plenty of give-until-it-hurts spirit in the Asian psyche, at least where keeping up with your peers is involved.

As to why they are underrepresented, part of it has got to be that many of the first generation are just not very charismatic. Yes they have worked very hard, and will work hard at athletics as well if that is what's required. But many are just not very comfortable in their skin - at least not at 17/18 when they're interviewing at the elite colleges. I don't see how you could control for that in a research paper, but based on my own experience it's a true stereotype - shy, not well dressed or groomed, pale, and undernourished. I'd expect that to decrease over time, since it's not true generally of the middle class Asian-Americans I've known.

OT: I dislike Jon Stewart AND Rick Sanchez but it's nice to see cracks developing in the coalition. Entertaining and instructive story...

Sanchez: "everyone who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, everyone who runs every other network is a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they the people in this country who are Jewish are an oppressed minority?"

CNN: "Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company," the CNN statement read. "We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well."

Asians are being discriminated against. Just like non SWPL white people are. You see, the elite do not like to compete for jobs; they would rather stuff the upper ranks with less capable people than themselves.

I was having a conversation with a politically incurious friend last night and was discussing this exact topic. I said something like "affirmative action really helps out some people get into elite colleges."

He laughed uncomfortably, then inquisitively asserted, "I thought they got rid of affirmative action like 20 years ago."

Since you mentioned legacy admissions, here's some late-breaking commentary from the New York Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/opinion/30kahlenberg.html?src=me&ref=general

He points to Cal Tech as a place that has no legacy preference and (therefore, implied) a very low rate of legacy students: just 1.5%. Now I wonder how much higher than that it could ever be at Cal Tech. Tech is a small college where most everyone is *very* smart. After the usual intergenerational regression to the mean in intelligence, your legacy population would already be seriously thinned. But that's just the first natural filter. If your Dad went to Princeton and you're not nearly as bright, you can still find an easy major there and have a good time for four years. At Cal Tech, all the majors are hard, and you will not have a good time. Then there's the immigration angle: the right end of the bell curve today is mostly made up of the children of people who weren't in the USA when they were college age. And finally, there's the intergenerational tendency (among the upper-middle class) to drift toward softer, more people-oriented, fields.

If you believe that racial groups should be represented in the entering class in ratio to their presence in the population, you have to advantage some groups who would otherwise be underrepresented and disadvantage other groups who would otherwise be overrepresented.

The squashing out of asians is simply the same as the squashing out of whites. Too many of them qualify by objective criteria to get a population mix that relects the overall population

U Berkeley has no alum preference. I have been hit for money many times and they always made it absolutely clear that it is against the law for UCB to add any preference for an alum.

If they had some alum preference, denying it would obviate its value to the University. Some crappy politician could probably get their favored in, it is a govenrment client after all. A friend who had a close position to Mayor Kotch of NYC got someone into NYU law school by asking his honor for a favor.

Perhaps Caltech alumni advise their scions to do their undergraduate studies at Harvey Mudd instead?

I was walking across Caltech's campus a number of years ago and came upon a sophomore coed giving a speech to a group of high school students and their parents who were visiting the school. She was asked how hard Caltech is and ... she broke into tears. She eventually got control of herself enough to give a brave smile through her tears and assert that sophomore year was, really, much better.

What's interesting is how at Cal-Tech, 40% of the undergrad population is Asian. I remember the Espenshade study arguing that at most elite schools, 40% of the undergrad population would become Asian Americans, if these schools implemented a purely meritocratic admissions system.

"The squashing out of asians is simply the same as the squashing out of whites."

Yeah, except for the fact that in one case the group that founded the schools (and country) under discussion is being displaced, and in the other a foreign race is complaining that the group that founded the schools (and country) under discussion is refusing to be displaced fast enough, it's exactly the same. Oh, that, and the fact that Asians do overperform academically relative to their native ability thanks to grindish study habits, so Asian academic records do overpredict future performance. Sorry, dude.

The usual crowd is arguing that in ivy admissions whites should be shown preference over Asians because "whites founded the ivies"

But really the people that founded the ivies are the Wasp aristocracy.

So all the embittered prole whites here who are not part of the Wasp aristocracy feel entitled to get in, why, exactly? They didn't create the ivies, and the people that did create the ivies want nothing to do with the white proles

The truth of the matter is that the Wasp aristocracy founded those schools and provided generations of leadership to those schools. The Wasp aristocracy chose its own set of successors and those chosen successors now run the ivies jointly with the Wasp aristocracy. The wasp aristocracy are quite happy, thank you, socializing with the people they currently socialize with and excluding the white proles

This is devolving in to parody. America has massively growing numbers of minorities with IQ higher than the white prole class. America also has massively growing numbers of minorities with IQ lower than the white prole class.

And America still has a residual wasp aristocracy.

Just who is it that the white prole lobby on this thread hope to win over to their side? You call for high IQ Korean Christians to leave America and move back "home"? Then you call for white proles to be shown preference over high IQ non whites? that's really going to insure the success of Silicon Valley.

The white proles have had their chance. White proles have the state of West Virginia all to themselves. Let the white proles build their own ivy in West Virgina and implement all the interesting policies they call for on this blog like excluding high IQ asians. Let's see how many scientists this "white survivalist" ivy actually produces

This 2003 Daniel Golden WSJ piece, linked by Razib Khan under "implicit Asian quota," demonstrates in vivid detail just how much it sucks to be a high-achieving, not-socially-connected, Asian immigrant kid from Groton when applying to the Ivies:

Instead of going to college, would it be better to immediately start work as a test prep tutor?

Um. No. First, you have to have some serious cojones to charge $150/hour, and your clientele is extremely limited. You also have to guarantee results, and you don't work 40 hours/week. To say nothing of paying your own benefits.

While I disagree with your insinuation that Asian American scores are inflated by test prep,

You all do realize what "on the margin" means, right? And, while I'm checking semantics, "on average"?

Test prep absolutely improves scores. Research consistently shows that it does. And while the improvement, on average, is about 50 points per test, the landmark Powers study and follow up stated clearly that some kids see huge gains, others see none, and everything in between.

Are Asians "inflating" their scores by test prep? No. What they are doing, in large numbers and at every income level, is going to test prep and honing their performance to pick up every last possible point. There is nothing wrong with this, but whites, outside of the extremely rich and driven, don't do test prep to this extent. Thus, Asians are improving their scores on the margin much more than whites are.

Athletes do donate much more money than non athletes

I was going to say this. The best of the Bok books went into this, I thought.

Complaints about how the UCs are too Asian are ubiquitous, and come from the most PC of people.

Also true. In fact, the UC's most recent admissions change, dropping the Subject tests, was due to this. The university even risked pissing off Hispanics, taking away their big advantage over blacks, in order to have an excuse to cut the Asian population.

Large numbers of Asians at American colleges is a relatively new phenomenon.

To a certain extent, I agree, but as someone else pointed out, Cal and UCLA were busted discriminating against Asians in the late 80s, so that's plenty of time to reach moneyed alumni stages.

There is big business in test prep work - several franchises that provide real value to the students. I have always wondered though, what are the points of these tests? To prove how smart people are....or how well they prepare for a test taking process?

Let the white proles build their own ivy in West Virgina and implement all the interesting policies they call for on this blog like excluding high IQ asians.

Let the "high IQ asians" build their own Ivy. While they are at it, let those "high IQ asians" build a country of their own that they find worth living in. That task seems to be beyond their "high IQ".

What White Americans benefiting from legacy admissions? Really, a few preppies at Harvard and Yale are "White Americans?" Going to Cal State Long Beach or Fullerton, is not exactly prestigious, and you won't get preferential admission to State U just because your parents went there.

Moreover, most Football and Basketball scholarships go to Blacks, only Baseball still is mostly White. Joe Average White guy gets priced out of the better social networks (elite schools) while his taxes pay for Blacks and Hispanics with lower objective rankings like test scores to go instead. Meanwhile "legacy" admits pay the full freight for the AA admits.

Exclusion from the elite social networks would not be a problem if for most purposes, Univ of Idaho was as good as say, Cornell or Penn, or even Rutgers, for most social vetting purposes (employment, running for office, etc.) The visceral reaction to Sarah Palin (went to JC, Idaho) makes that obviously not so. It's a two tier system: Ivy/Near Ivy, and everyone else far distant.

When I was an Undergrad at Claremont, Mudd guys would SCREAM at the top of their lungs for fifteen minutes straight at 9 O'Clock during midterms. So no, Mudd is not easier than Cal Tech.

In the late 1980s, whites were statistically proportionally represented at U.C. Berkeley (and UCLA). Asians were about 25% of the student body, but only about 6% of the state. (Or of the 18-22 population?) So it was blatantly obvious to everyone that affirmative action benefitted blacks and Hispanics at the expense of Asians. Whites weren't really affected, at that time. A purely meritocratic admissions system might have admitted different whites, but about the same number. But the percentage of Asians would have (and did, briefly, once AA was "abolished") risen to over 40%.

I can see some very upper-class white parents being concerned about there being too many Asians at a college, but so long as the gender ratio was reasonable, most white male 17-year-olds would either not care, or would be pleased at the idea of being around so many young Asian women.

anon:"Steve, maybe you should just drop this "Asian scores are inflated by tset prep" meme. As some of your readers have pointed out, you have to decide whether this is an objective HBD blog or a pro-white blog. Your repeated insinuations and your persistently coy denials are quite frankly getting to be tiring. You risk alienating your smarter readers, who are more interested in HBD as a whole, rather than being interested in pro-white issues."

Couldn't it be both objective/reality-based and pro-white? Richard Lynn appears to have no trouble doing both - as a scientist he was the first to notice that east-Asians have a higher mean IQ than whites, but he isn't race-neutral in his personal views, he seems to prefer his own group (whites) to other groups (non-whites).

Also, you can be reality-based without being IQ-supremacist. Just because group X has higher IQs than group Y, doesn't mean that group Y should necessarily want to be ruled by group X.

Africans often prefer not to be ruled by Europeans, likewise European ethnies often prefer not to be ruled by Chinese (and gentile European ethnies often prefer not to be ruled by Ashkenazi).

anon:"Well, the donation record of working class white boys admitted to the ivies is terrible. Going by the track record, it is dumb for the ivies to let some working class boy from West Virginia or Idaho in, since that working class boy will grow up to donate very little."

Good point. But if this is how they think, they're not non-profit and shouldn't have charitable status.

Here in the UK, for a large chunk of the twentieth century we had a system where poor whites (and almost everyone was white) could advance on merit/academic ability: the Grammar School system, which fed bright pupils into the elite Universities. My mother was born dirt poor and benefited from this. The grammar schools were abolished in the '60s, and poor whites now have far less of an opportunity than they used to.

My impression is that the US never had this level of opportunity for smart poor whites; the Ivy League always favoured upper-middle to uppper class Yankees; so in the US smart poor whites have not lost existing academic opportunities the way they did in the UK.

The big loss in the US seems to be that middling-smart working class whites have lost the opportunities for a middle-class lifestyle they used to have, due to the transition to a low-wage, immigration-based economy.

Steve, maybe you should just drop this "Asian scores are inflated by tset prep" meme. As some of your readers have pointed out, you have to decide whether this is an objective HBD blog or a pro-white blog. Your repeated insinuations and your persistently coy denials are quite frankly getting to be tiring. You risk alienating your smarter readers, who are more interested in HBD as a whole, rather than being interested in pro-white issues.

I don't see why the Asian advantage could not be due to both innate superiority and test prep. g-loaded tests become less g-loaded with training.

"But really the people that founded the ivies are the Wasp aristocracy.

The people that founded the Ivies were a bunch of gun-toting, bible-thumping, fire-and-brimstone-preaching, right-wing religious kooks."

Yes, the _ancestors_ of the WASP aristocracy. Of course, they were suspicious of organized militaries in peacetime, and they were all for learning as long as it had to do with God. By the time they started to turn into the Ivies, though, they were a bunch of old-money New England merchants. You can't project 'right' and 'left' wing that far back and expect them to look familiar...how about that whole Federalist-Democratic-Republican thing?

"Moreover, most Football and Basketball scholarships go to Blacks, only Baseball still is mostly White."

College football is about 50% white, college basketball about 65%, so if a school uses it's full compliment of 85 football scholarships yearly (including returning athletes from other classes) and, 13 basketball scholarships, that is about a whopping 50 "black" scholarships per year...on campuses of 25,000 students, Whoopie! (and of course almost ALL of the scholarships in other sports go to whites.)

"When I was an Undergrad at Claremont, Mudd guys would SCREAM at the top of their lungs for fifteen minutes straight at 9 O'Clock during midterms. So no, Mudd is not easier than Cal Tech."

Love the quantitative proof their, Whisk. You should go back to the alma mater and lecture on statistics.

Couldn't it be both objective/reality-based and pro-white? Richard Lynn appears to have no trouble doing both - as a scientist he was the first to notice that east-Asians have a higher mean IQ than whites, but he isn't race-neutral in his personal views, he seems to prefer his own group (whites) to other groups (non-whites).

Also, you can be reality-based without being IQ-supremacist. Just because group X has higher IQs than group Y, doesn't mean that group Y should necessarily want to be ruled by group X.

Africans often prefer not to be ruled by Europeans, likewise European ethnies often prefer not to be ruled by Chinese (and gentile European ethnies often prefer not to be ruled by Ashkenazi).

Heh, it's not like I've been hiding under a bush all this time. Been here for what, five years, at least? Acknowledge higher mean Asian IQ (and vastly superior European achievement over last 500 years), lower Asian criminality, AIDS rates, etc.

HBD-ers are such IQ fetishists that they project this onto everyone else. Pro-whites start from a much more natural, human foundation - family. We no more favor yellows over whites due to mean IQ than HBD-IQ-Fetishists favor their neighbors' genius kids over their own children (or dull Asians favor smart white kids over their own children).

HBD-ers should consider the matter of divergent premises before they get all huffy. (For that matter, they should consider the implied boost they give nurture in the nature vs nurture question when they try to substitute mean IQ for human accomplishment, but I digress)

Okay, fine, I give up. Let's implement cognitive elitism. We'll start with Israel. The top million scorers on a battery of IQ tests administered to every adult on Earth will be installed as Israel's ruling elite.

Hear that whooshing sound? That's the most cognitively elite population of all pulling out of the project at warp speed.

"Due to Title IX, which outlaws "discrimination" against females, especially in sports females don't like to play, colleges pay absurd amounts to bribe enough women to play certain sports."

The economic and social costs of Title IX must be significant: if men are more likely to be big donors to schools, cutting their athletic programs cuts the likely donor base. Also cutting athletic programs decreases the strength of male social networks.

So you have the costs of financing female programs which would otherwise not exist and the costs of hindering your male alumni network.

The few U.S. higher ed institutions not affected by Title IX could make some interesting comparisons.

Back when I was hanging out at the fairly prestigious university I attended, it was generally if quietly bruited about that while Asians did well enough academically (more so in high school than in college was my opinion at the time), having too many of them around made for more boring classes and a less interesting environment overall. Because they generally did not get involved in class (e.g. ask questions) in the same way, or participate much in extra-curricular activities.

Do colleges figure Asians won't donate as much as alumni?

At this point it probably goes beyond 'figuring'. I recall reading an article some years ago that said, at least at Stanford, non-white alumni in general, and Asians in particular, donated significantly less than Whites later in life, and that this posed a big future challenge as non-Whites had become a much larger group among undergrads (of course this was probably intentional). I don't recall if other variables were controlled for; probably not. At the time I remember laughing and saying to myself that Stanford was diversifying itself out of existence.

"The squashing out of asians is simply the same as the squashing out of whites."

Yeah, except for the fact that in one case the group that founded the schools (and country) under discussion is being displaced, and in the other a foreign race is complaining that the group that founded the schools (and country) under discussion is refusing to be displaced fast enough, it's exactly the same. That, and the fact that Asians do overperform academically relative to their native ability thanks to grindish study habits, so Asian academic records do overpredict future performance.

What's peculiar about the contemporary mix at elite colleges is how they pull toward meritocracy in some ways, but against it in others.

Yes, overall, SAT scores and HS grades are only higher than they were, say, in the 60s and perhaps the seventies.

But then there's the diversity thing.

No longer do we find mostly white males in these institutions. Now, half are women, maybe 15-20% are underrepresented minorities, and perhaps another 15-20% are Asian.

But suppose that it is true that women alumni don't give nearly as much as male alumni (no doubt because many choose the mommy track in the long run, with consequent minuscule compensation), and that Asians likewise give relatively little because they mostly pursue professions with good, but rarely remarkable, returns.

If that's a roughly accurate overview of the potential returns from alumni, we're talking about the proportion of alumni who stand a good chance of giving a large amount of money -- that is, white males -- being reduced to 25-35% of its previous level when virtually all alumni were white males.

Now the slightly more exclusive nature of these admissions might somewhat compensate for this, but it's hard to see that that would amount to very much.

One really does wonder how all that is going to work out in the end.

And one wonders as well if this problem doesn't go beyond the money issue. Historically, it's been white males who have, at the very highest level, dominated industry and the sciences, and, to a very good extent, most of the arts. Perhaps other groups might achieve something similar in due time -- but that is something on which the jury is still very much out.

With the amount debt and student loans college graduates incur today to obtain an average paying job, I doubt you are going to see a lot of alumni donations in the future since they in essence are already still paying their tuition off 10 - 20 years after they have graduated. Why would they keep handing their money over the school?

A lot of whites at the prestigious universities are either old money and/or Jewish (lots of overlap). So you lose them, you lose out on some fairly prestigious groups with lots of rich, philanthropic parents. Also, both groups often go on to do well in business or finance or entrapranuership (Jewish especially), which means big $$$ donations down the road. Alienating them isn't in your interest.

Asians are hardworking and serious people, but they have a reputation for being boring grinds. While not entirely fair (Asians do have a fair amount of intellectual curiosity and extracirricular interests), that's the perception. You get too many and you turn into Nerd U.

If test prep didn't matter, I would think that Japanese would do as well as the other Asians on their PSATs. I also don't understand why Asians would be spending so much time/money on the service if it doesn't work. My sense is that Asians are competent people and congitively can hold their own just fine against caucasians, but long study hours make a difference.

Asians tend to have slightly lower GPAs than whites at the collegiate level, even after you adjust for Asians being overrepresented in the hard sciences. Sociologists have speculated that this owes to being away from their parents, which reduces the push to succeed quite a bit.

Asians tend to follow the dominant social trends. So I'd bet that assimilated 3rd generation Asians donate as much as everyone else, but not much 1st gen and maybe 2nd gen.

Severn:"Also, there's zero evidence that people with high IQ's make good "rulers"."

AIR there's plenty of evidence in 'The Bell Curve' that high IQ correlates strongly with general competence, including competence in rulership. Even when people pursue bad policies, my impression is that smarter people often avoid the worst effects (compare insane Liberal-globalist policies under Bill Clinton to insane Liberal-globalist policies under GW Bush).

So, higher IQ rulers will tend to be more competent rulers. This usually has benefits for the ruled. Where the rulers are alien, those benefits may be less than the perceived benefits of being ruled by their own kind.

Compare Africa under European colonialism to Africa today. And consider what proportion of Africans want European colonial rule back. Instead they've mostly achieved a modus operandi where African 'Big Men' rule, but assisted by European NGOs, money, UN programs et al - some of the benefits of European rule, without the disbenefit of seeing people of a different race as your rulers.

Likewise Obama's genius was to be perceived as black by black Americans, and as 'post racial' by enough white Americans, making him an acceptable ruler to both groups.

Anon:"Except you reach the uncomfortable conclusion that the "Founding Fathers" and the Abolitionist movement were, not to put too fine a point on it, radical Leftist kooks and terrorists."

I agree to an extent, and it's mabe easier to see this from the UK, but I think that compared to all subsequent revolutions, including the French, it's remarkable the extent to which non-radical, non-Leftist ideas influenced the US Founding Fathers; to the extent that they had considerable support from British Whigs. They could (somewhat) legitimately claim to be acting in the spirit of Locke and the 1688 Glorious Revolution. And the 17th century revolutions against the "Divine Right of Kings" could be seen as largely reactionary and conservative, restoring the ancient and immemorial Liberties of Englishmen against new-fangled oriental-style Despotism.

In the old days in California you could do just about anything you wanted to a Chinese. They used to drop them down the holes holding the dynamite. There are no authenticated records of a black ever being lynched in California but there were many Chinese lynchings in LA in the 1930s(?).

On external evidence alone the Chinese at least in California have a better case for reparations or for affirmative action preferences in employment and jobs than do blacks or Hispanics. But it doesn't seem to be working out that way.

Chinese like the Jews before them are excluded because they are too smart while blacks and Hispanics are preferred because they are too dumb. Go figure.

The premise that Asians are less benefited has no statistical validity unless all variables are controlled. Didn't see that in your article. Is it possible that more low-SAT Asians applied than other ethnic groups? this might account for their slightly lower acceptance rate. Or, the higher rate of white legacies might account for it. Drawing specious conclusions from insufficiently stratified data can be dangerous.

>As some of your readers have pointed out, you have to decide whether this is an objective HBD blog or a pro-white blog.[...] You risk alienating your smarter readers, who are more interested in HBD as a whole, rather than being interested in pro-white issues.<

There is no contradiction between the two. Between observing HBD differences (positive and negative) and naturally preferring your own people. Everyone is something - you can't expect Steve to be a cipher. He's white. He also observes things as truthfully as he can. Asians have a higher than average IQ. Whites are in the middle, NAMS below that.

What you're really criticizing Steve for is that he isn't an IQ-supremacist. He never was (IMO). He simply observes the positive and negative consequences of group differences in IQ (among other things). If he prefers his group, it's only natural, and he doesn't seem to twist facts to get to that position, as do various NAM advocates.

The more you look into it, the more realistic and truthful Steve's outlook seems to be.

I live in a northern European country. Over here, university admission is almost totally done by grade average, basted on final grades at end of high school. GPA and other similar tests do not enter into the equation.

We do not have any ethnic affimative action at all. About 0.8% of the population has african background, 1 in 600 is a jew. some 3.5% of the population come from muslim countries. About 12-13% of the population are foreigners, mostly gentile whites. Roughly 1% are east asians.

With the exception of a very small set of specialized college-level studies (music, theater, police academy. etc) the colleges/universities do not use any aptitude testing for the specific studies.

Legacy admissions is prohibited in law. The law proscibes a lot of very specific rules on what the universities may do when admitting students, in order to maintain a fair and meritocratic admission system. Most admissions are made not by the universities themselves, but by the national admission board, which compares the grade averages for those who have applied for a given course in a given university, and hand out acceptances to the students with the highest averages.

We have college sports, but being a good sportsman (except for the national PE teacher academy) does exactly zilch for your admission. Being a college athlete does not make you more popular with the girls, either - nor are college sports results reported by media outside the in-house university papers. The national PE teacher academy takes in several olympic-class athletes each year, it is a way to help the nation´s olympic prospects.

Universities rely mostly on funding from the national budget, none of the big ones are private. Two are former state unis which have turned into trust funds, the rest are state universities

There are some exceptions to the above, but those are very minor indeed.

The short version: over here, 99% of the admission is based on grade average - no AA whatsoever.

Interesting post. What that suggests to me is that Europe and East Asia embrace egalitarianism to a degree that America doesn't. Of course, Europe does seem to be moving in a troubling direction, as more and more less cognitively able groups immigrate to the continent.

By the way, I'm extremely surprised that Steve has complained about Asian American over-representation at elite colleges. I'd gotten the impression that he was less of a pro-white commentator and more of a cognitive elitist who was interested in general HBD issues. I guess I was wrong. I think you get a much more objective HBD perspective from someone like Half Sigma, for instance.

I second the anon who thinks alumni donations will decline. People donated to their colleges largely because the schools charged less in tuition than they could have: the charity created warm feelings and led to greatful alumni.

Now that the "nonprofit" schools have taken to capturing as much surplus as possible, I can't see anyone feeling greatful for a 100K bachelors degree.

For Asians, there's substanial data that they outperform what IQ alone would indicate. There's also evidence that raised in similar environments, they have similar IQs as whites. Read Flynn's book Beyond Achievement.

For even Indians, there's evidence they do much better than IQ would indicate, but they do seem to be at least a little (ie 5-8 points) below the white mean.

Steve is willing to acknowledge all this, so why how is this blog in denial of HBD? How many "pro-white" bloggers would accept the success of overseas Indians as legimitate or acknowledge high Jewish IQ?

Steve's views on Asians are based on a simple reality, which is that test prep and studying helps a lot - and Asians tend to outwork the other groups substanially. His views, incidentally, are in agreement with Flynn's findings on the high-performing children of pre-WWII Asian immigrants.

By the way, Flynn found a mean IQ for Chinese-Americans of 103. This is several points above the 98.5 IQ value he found for the children of the first immigrant cohort. He attributes the rise in IQ to home environment, but I'd speculate that more select immigration played a role. Regardless, Chinese-American kids do a lot better than even 103 IQ would indicate.

Steve is about as objective as it gets. You might not like his politics, but his analysis is completely factual.

For example, Steve pointed out that Asians are represented in the UCs, in large part, because they take lots of AP tests. On standardized tests alone, which correlate more strongly with IQ, Asians wouldn't be nearly as overrerpresented in the UCs. This indicates that Asians are outperforming their IQ by working harder.

When Steve makes his assertions, he's on a solid ground.

I feel sort of bad for Asian-Americans, but there's immense political pressure to take from them and give to NAMs. Also, it's not like Asian countries let anybody immigrate anyway. If you want to attend, let's say, the University of Tokyo and then live/work permanently in Japan, tough luck.

By the way, I'm extremely surprised that Steve has complained about Asian American over-representation at elite colleges. I'd gotten the impression that he was less of a pro-white commentator and more of a cognitive elitist who was interested in general HBD issues. I guess I was wrong. I think you get a much more objective HBD perspective from someone like Half Sigma, for instance.

Actually, no. To the extent that HS proscribes expressions of white racial interests you won't get a more objective perspective at all. How could you? "Whites" are part of HDB and as they slowly come to terms with their racial interests (or simply with the notion that they have racial interests) you'll begin to see exert political and cultural influence. It's absurd to claim "objectivity" by remaining ignorant of such a phenomenon. Sailer's personal feelings about it (whether he's "pro-white" or not) are quite beside the point.

GPA = grade point average, so it's not a test (per se) like the SAT (or later GRE).

About 0.8% of the population has african background, 1 in 600 is a jew. some 3.5% of the population come from muslim countries.

Wait 'til 8% of your population has an "african background" and only 0.8% (or 13.5%/3.5% for muslims) make it into the best, most competitive universities based solely on "final grades" -- then let us know if you have any "ethnic affirmative action".

you reach the uncomfortable conclusion that the "Founding Fathers" and the Abolitionist movement were, not to put too fine a point on it, radical Leftist kooks and terrorists.

You can only reach that conclusion if you are not familiar with what the Founders believed, or with what the Left believes, or both. The Founders were extremely conservative, in the original Burkean sense of the word.

Yes you need a BA to go to med school in the US, but you don't in Britain or I believe most or all Commonwealth countries. Most UK med students in fact start med school at 18 after doing their "A levels" (AP level courses more or less). There are some that have university degrees before starting medicine but that's more in the nature of having two degrees rather than a undergraduate and grad school one. UK med school does take 5 years instead of 4 though.

Quite a few students who don't have bachelors degrees take an "intercalated" year interrupting med school training to do medical research type course work and hands on training after their 2nd or more often 3rd med school year. When they pass that the do get a BS (Bachelor of Science) degree.

Right. Factors other than IQ are important in succeeding in life. Asians tend to have a nose to the grindstone work ethic and respect/obediance to authority/parents/society that's useful for doing well in school and building a middle class lifestyle. It's futile to argue that Asians aren't at least as bright as other groups, but it's also ridiculous to claim that Asians don't outstudy other ethnicities and aren't more conformist.

As for Jews, they seem to be about 2/3 of a SD above the white mean. On top of that, it does seem that Jewish people are also more industrious and perhaps more creative than white gentiles.

Hispanics also seem to perform what their IQ might suggest, due to their overall high level of lethargy and listlessness.

Somebody raised a question about how Western universities are better than Asian schools. I think it's partly because there's less of a conformist mentality among Western faculty than Asian/Indian faculty. Also, I'd bet that there's more innovation in the West.

Good point about Japan catching up. While the east is not known for being particularly innovative, the Japanese have created a lot of cool new products over the years. If they are representative of the rest of East Asia, then maybe we can expect more Chinese innovation in the future.

Western European schools, outside of the UK and a few others (Grande Ecoles), have been razed by overly egalitarian ethos. Eastern European schools are not well funded.

A good question is to what extent these traits (industriousness, obediance, creativity, lethargy) are genetic.

Sword - thanks for the post. It shows that a lot of things that are "impossible" in America are done in Europe all the time time. (C.f. fair drawing of legislative constituencies - impossible in America, ubiquitous in the UK.)

I don't think Europeans are smarter on the whole than Americans, I'd say we're about even. Smart Europeans are just much easier to find than Americans, because smart Americans are likely to be (a) making tons of money, quietly, running a hedge fund, (b) dodging EODs at the perimeter of some base in the Asian sandbox, or (c) working strange hours for a high-tech company. Smart Europeans are likely to *gasp* have university degrees.

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